Archive for September, 2012

Feels like I’ve been waiting forever for Looper to come out. Finally got to see it last night.

Funny pre-amble: As I was buying tickets, the previous show was letting out. I’ve gone out of my way for months to not watch trailers, not read interviews, and otherwise not be spoiled at all before seeing the film. Suddenly I found myself surrounded by a mob who just saw it and are discussing what happened. I promptly put my fingers in my ears and started humming.

(Warning — To make sure I don’t do the same to you, stop reading now if you haven’t seen the movie…)

Overall I mostly dug Looper, but it didn’t quite live up to the hype in my head. To be fair, with Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rian Johnson, and consultation by Shane Carruth (of Primer fame) my expectation was “greatest time travel movie ever” which was probably setting the bar a touch high.

Likes:

The diner scene with future and past selves meeting is an instant classic. Some of the explanations of how memories work echoed Timely Persuasion to a degree, and how Bruce Willis decides to NOT talk about time travel is awesome.

JGL totally sells that he’s a younger Bruce Willis.

Jeff Daniels is awesome as Abe. Love his “I’m from the future. You should go to China” line.

The flashback/forward 30 year montage was very well done.

Without giving too much away, the whole general conundrum of the loop was one of the more thought provoking takes I’ve seen — especially how it starts to play with whether the older self is actually older & wiser or not (again mirroring TP a bit).

What is probably the iPhone 21 (assuming every other year for a # jump) looks awesome!

(Nitpicky) Dislikes:

Even though it was a good piece of subtle foreshadowing done well – and pretty crucial to the endgame – I didn’t really like the TK bits. Probably due to the fact that I tend to love time travel, but not really like other sci-fi all that much.

I wanted a little more out of the Abe/Kid Blue/Rainmaker story. Maybe some sort of overlap or reveal (for awhile I thought Kid Blue was Abe — though I’m not sure if I still think that, or if it would be good or bad if he was). Didn’t need to be overt or overly explainy, but struck me as a missing piece.

When Bruce Willis is holding his watch and talking about his wife at the diner, I thought the fact that they didn’t actually show the photo meant it was already gone. Would have been cool to take that further, indicating he still remembered her though the signs of her existence were fading — ala BTTF…

I also wished we got just a little bit more from the ending. Maybe a very brief scene in 2074 that hints at whether or not the mission was successful. Not a Hollywood ending, but some sort of open-ended twist about how the Rainmaker turns out.

I suspect some of these dislikes will change over time — and the alleged 45 minutes of deleted scenes on the DVD may help.

Probably need to revise my list at some point, but after one viewing I’d put Looper behind BTTF, Timecrimes, 12 Monkeys, and Primer. Probably ranks right around the under-rated Deja Vu in my book — maybe a few clicks ahead.

Been working on and off (mostly off) on a novel called Duty Calls for the last few years. Inspired by a 6 week stint on jury duty, it’s mainly a tale set during the long idle times at the courthouse. Hours and days spent hanging out with other jurors, exploring the building, telling stories, etc. The book alternates between these “hanging out” scenes and “flashback” scenes of the jurors in their normal, non-jury duty lives.

“Fester” is one of these flashback chapters, and one that works pretty well as a standalone.

Along with being a preview of things to come, it’s also an ode to summer music festivals, and possibly my retirement from “2 dudes in a car” storytelling (though you can never say never…)